Aircraft (such as commercial aircraft) often encounter in-flight icing conditions. Icing on an aircraft may occur when atmospheric conditions cause ice formation on surfaces of the aircraft. Icing conditions may occur when droplets of supercooled liquid water are present. Water is considered supercooled when the water is cooled below a freezing port, but is still in liquid form. Icing conditions may be characterized by the size of the water droplets, the content of liquid water, air temperature, and other parameters.
Most, if not all, commercial aircraft include icing detectors. In response to the detection of icing conditions, the icing detectors are configured to automatically operate ice protection systems or to alert a pilot to do so. The ice protection systems are configured to prevent or remove ice from aircraft parts or surfaces (such as wings, empennages, engine inlets, air data probes, and the like) as well as provide other protective functions through avionics, crew alerting, and/or control laws.
Certain known ice detectors are incapable of detecting different types of icing conditions. For example, such ice detectors are configured to detect one particular type of icing condition, and may therefore be unable to detect a different type of icing condition.